


Beyond Sorrow and Grief

by thedeathchamber



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 03:31:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2836466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedeathchamber/pseuds/thedeathchamber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gone were Fili and Kili, and gone was Thorin Oakenshield. And with them the old Bilbo Baggins of Bag End, though Bag End remained the same.</p><p>_____</p><p>Learning to move on is a journey all its own.</p><p>(Spoilers for BotFA.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond Sorrow and Grief

  
_Many places I have been_  
_Many sorrows I have seen_  
_But don't regret_  
_Nor will I forget_  
_All who took that road with me_

 

* * *

 

Bilbo would not be persuaded to stay. No matter how many dwarves stood outside his tent or if Gandalf asked him yet again if he was quite sure he wanted to leave before the burial. Not for anything would he see Thorin laid out, as if in innocent sleep, only to have him wrested from him again. He could not go through another farewell. He could not.

  
“Will you not stay?” Bard asked when Bilbo took his leave of him.

  
“Not you too!” Bilbo cried out. His face flushed. “I can’t- I can’t.”

  
He rushed out of the tent with his back bent under his pack and the weight of his grief. Gandalf murmured some excuse that Bilbo could not make out, nor did he care; to get away was all that was on his mind- to escape the sorrow that threatened to choke him every minute of every hour that he passed beneath the shadow of the Mountain.

  
~ ~ ~ ~

  
Beorn and Gandalf conversed often but Bilbo rode in silence. Every time he tried to speak the words stuck in his throat- as they had done then- when he had been unable to keep Thorin with him... when he had lost him. When, a stuttering mess, he had fumbled to hold him, to keep him from slipping away and leaving Bilbo. Leaving him to struggle against a silence that could never be broken and forever searching without knowing it for a particular shade of blue in the sky... and never finding it.

  
To have that last moment and to have spent it mumbling about the eagles instead of telling Thorin that he- telling him that he was brave and kind and loyal, and that he had given Bilbo a life to be proud of, and that to be at his side had been an honor beyond anything he deserved.

  
He rode in silence during the day and during the night he bit his fist between snatches of sleep filled with gold and ice and blood until they reached Beorn’s house. He slept without dreaming there.

  
“Farewell.” Beorn said, and no more. He fixed Bilbo with a keen look, however. His eyes dark and mellow, with that deep understanding that one imagined at times in the gaze of wild beasts, in an instant of connection created by the experience of being alive.

  
“How do you bear it?” Bilbo called out, voice strangled in his throat.

  
Beorn turned around.

  
“B-being left alone.”

  
He crouched in front of Bilbo, a hand on his shoulder. “The pain will not leave you. But it will become a part of you: love mingled with grief. It cannot be otherwise.”  


  
Bilbo nodded, biting the inside of his cheek.

  
~ ~ ~ ~

  
Gandalf and he went on until late afternoon when the temperature dropped and it started to snow. They went on until it became difficult to see and Gandalf had to tip the snow off the brim of his hat.

  
“We’d best find shelter.” he said at last. “I fear we will miss Beorn’s halls dearly tonight!”

  
“Quite.” Bilbo agreed, already shivering.

  
They found a place that offered some protection from the wind and cover from the snow though it had dwindled to a sprinkle. Bilbo went off a little way to fetch more wood for the fire while Gandalf busied himself with supper.

  
The silence peculiar to snow at night surrounded him and he found himself standing still so as not to disturb it. He tilted his head up so that the snowflakes caught in his eyelashes and melted on his face. He thought of Thorin and the warmth of his blood on his hands and the coldness of his hair when Bilbo had rested his cheek against it.

  
He curled up in a crouch and wept.

  
“Come and sit by the fire.” Gandalf said when he returned.

  
They set their bedrolls side by side and Bilbo was a long time to fall asleep though he was warm between Gandalf’s back and the fire.

  
~ ~ ~ ~

  
“Gandalf...”

  
“Hm?”

  
“Why did you choose me?” Bilbo choked out, sitting with his clenched hands resting on his lap.

  
Gandalf turned to look at him with a frown. “Do you wish I had not? That no dwarves had ever darkened your doorstep and you had never stepped outside the Shire?”

  
“Yes.” Bilbo’s face scrunched up. “No.” He smoothed his face out with a palm. “I don’t know. Maybe then Fili and Kili would still be... alive. And... Thorin...” He drew in breath but was unable to continue.

  
Gandalf shook his head. “What might have been is forever beyond our knowledge. Do not torment yourself dwelling on how to change the past.” He puffed at his pipe with his brow furrowed deeply. “You did much, Bilbo, for Thorin and his Company, and for the whole of the good West. A great evil has been removed from this world.”

  
“And a great good.” Bilbo’s voice broke.

  
“It was an honorable death, and victory, in the end.” Gandalf said with a sigh.

  
“Victory they called it, yes.” Bilbo whispered.

  
Gandalf was a dark profile against the fire. He shifted and the light caught the wetness of his eye.

  
“I never thought too far ahead.” Bilbo confessed. “You warned me I would not be the same if I returned, but I never imagined it would end like this. You never said- that it could hurt like this. All I have left is... memory. And such memory that I fear at times I cannot stand the pain of it.”

  
“There is sorrow in memory but also joy. Would you rid yourself of your pain by banishing their memory from your heart?” Gandalf paused. “Would you forget him?”

  
Bilbo hid his face in his sleeve.

  
He did not go on until Bilbo fell silent. “If you wish it I will apologize. If you are sorry that you went then I am sorry that I ever got you involved in this.”

  
Looking down at his hands Bilbo remembered how he had scrubbed them raw washing off Thorin’s blood. “I am sorry.”

  
“Then so am I.” Gandalf replied, staring into the fire.

  
~ ~ ~ ~

  
The music drifted to him as from as great a distance; clear and enchanting as starlight it lulled Bilbo into a trance. He leant on the balustrade with his head resting on his crossed arms watching the world dissolve into darkness as evening fell.

  
“Do I disturb your rest, Master Baggins?”

  
Bilbo straightened up as Elrond came to stand by his side. He shook his head. “Not at all.” The trill of a lone harp swelled in the space between every word. “It’s quite beautiful.”

  
“It is.” Elrond said. He waited until the harp was joined by the other instruments and the clear voices of elves. “I understand you mean to leave us soon.”

  
Bilbo peered up at him. “Hm. Yes. It’s about time I was getting home, I suppose.”

  
Elrond looked down at him with a smile. “You are welcome to stay for as long as you wish, Bilbo Baggins.”

  
Bilbo managed a smile. “Thank you. This is a perfect house you have here... whatever one might desire.”

  
“Yet what you desire cannot be found here.” Bilbo opened his mouth but Elrond went on before he could speak. “Nor anywhere on this side of the sea.”

  
“And what is it I want?” he asked faintly, bristling.

  
“You wish there to be no pain in loss.” Elrond said simply.

  
Bilbo gaped at him then ducked his head with a frown, fumbling at a retort.

  
“If there was genuine love there will be sorrow.” Elrond turned to face the dark expanse of the valley, hands resting on the balustrade. “The lives of elves are long and much that we hold dear in this world is fleeting; all that is left to us is precious memory and the knowledge that for however long it lasted it was good.”

  
He turned to look at Bilbo who met his gaze with a lump in his throat. “And if there is pain in the remembering that is but a small price to pay in the end, is it not?”

  
Bilbo cleared his throat. “It was good.” His voice shook. “He was...” He took a tremulous breath. “It was good.”

  
In the still night air he could remember the warmth of Thorin’s embrace and the radiance of his smile and the sound of his voice in that last moment when he had used his final breath for Bilbo. Though their time together had been short it meant a lifetime to him, and every memory of Thorin was a greater treasure than could ever be found under any mountain.

  
~ ~ ~ ~

  
It was not a long road to the Shire from Rivendell but they travelled at a slow pace. Gandalf seemed less grim than he had been before their rest at Imladris and though there was still no laughter in Bilbo he found he could converse again and listen to the wizard’s stories as he had not had the heart to do since leaving Dale.

  
“How can it be that I stand here when he who was so fierce a warrior lies beneath the ground and Orcrist dumb in his hand?” Bilbo murmured. He squinted up at the stone trolls and pulled out his sword with a ring that echoed.

  
Gandalf leant on his wooden staff with a sigh. “Many that die deserve life and some that live deserve death.” he said heavily. “To what end... I am not wise enough to say.”

  
Bilbo slid Sting back into its sheath.

  
“I am not sorry, Gandalf.” he said when they were back on the road and the trolls had faded from view.

  
“What’s that?” Gandalf asked absently. He walked on a few feet before he realized that Bilbo had come to a stop.

  
Bilbo clasped his hands behind his back, staring at his feet. “I’m not sorry that you picked me.” he explained. “In fact I’m glad you did. I wouldn’t give it up- the time we spent together... not unless it meant he was to live.”

  
He didn’t look up until Gandalf’s shadow engulfed him. “My dear hobbit,” he said. “I am sorry. I am sorry that you have had to know such sadness.” He put an arm around Bilbo and pulled him into a hug.

  
~ ~ ~ ~

  
“He was... my friend.” Bilbo said.

  
_He was my blood brother. He was my king. He was my dearest friend. He was everything to me._ But he could say no more. Not with his breath catching in his chest and the threat of another breakdown for which he had not the strength.

  
Bilbo wandered into his hobbit hole, the imprint of a different dwarf in boisterous laughter shadowing every step. He put up the portrait with his mind on the laughter and the music that had filled his home for one unforgettable night.

  
Although the house was laid bare with all his furniture in procession down the hill, Bag End was still home, as full of potential for comfort and contentment as it had ever been- gone were the days of cold and hunger and peril. Gone too were the days of ringing metal and stone, of rambunctious dwarves around a table and brooding dwarves around a fire. Gone were Fili and Kili, and gone was Thorin Oakenshield. And with them the old Bilbo Baggins of Bag End, though Bag End remained the same.

  
He would fill the house with fine furniture again and stock up his pantry; he would have second breakfast and sleep on a feather pillow... but his tongue would not forget the speech of elves and his mind would spell out in ink the affairs of dragons and kings of old and ancient warriors alongside the pleasure of hot water and cold ale.

  
And when he stared out the window with his pen limp in his hand he would be thinking of the heavy tread of dwarven boots and the intricacy of dwarven braids... of Thorin smiling in the sunlight of a day long ago.

  
And if he then stood up from his desk with quivering breath, dabbing at the wetness on his cheek... no one need ever know.

  
~ ~ ~ ~

  
Bilbo stood at the foot of the tree with the dappled sunlight catching the gold in his hair and lighting up the leaves against the morning sky. The young tree had long ago surpassed him in height yet it had still much to grow.

  
He put his hand on the trunk, spreading his fingers out in a thoughtless gesture as he hummed a little tune he’d been working on.

  
“All these good acorns gone to waste!” Hamfast Gamgee sauntered up to the edge of the mantle of acorns that covered the ground around the tree. “I do wish you’d reconsider, Mr. Bilbo.”

  
Bilbo turned to greet him with a smile. “The pigs have plenty to eat, I’m sure, without getting into my acorns.”

  
Hamfast shrugged. “I had to ask.”

  
“Of course. Every year since it began to bear fruit.” Bilbo said with a chuckle.

  
The gardener squinted up at the tree, leaning back with his thumbs hooked in his belt to take it all in. “You used to worry something fierce it wasn’t growing right but look at it now.”

  
Bilbo scooped up a handful of acorns at his feet. “The first few years were the worst.” he admitted, turning them round and round in his hand. “I nearly despaired that it would ever prosper.”

  
“And I kept telling you, sir, oak trees are strong! Once they take root there’s no getting rid of them.”

  
Bilbo looked down at the acorns in his hand, a patch of shade obscuring his face from the other hobbit. “That’s true.”

  
“Their wood is very fine too... But I don’t suppose you’d ever consider cutting it down...” Hamfast sighed.

  
Bilbo went over to him and put an acorn in his hand. “I’m afraid not.” He looked up at the tree with his brow creased, as though the sun hurt his eyes. “I’m rather fond of this tree, Master Gamgee.”

  
Hamfast nodded. “That you are.” he agreed.

  
He watched Bilbo climb onto the path home to Bag End with the acorn in his fist, wondering.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Because I couldn't not write anything after watching the movie. Leave me to die: my shipper heart has burst.  
> Feedback is welcome! Thank you for reading!


End file.
